How this massive 9-foot-tall video game cosplay was made for New York Comic Con

• This "Overwatch" costume blew fans away at New York
Comic Con.
• The over nine-foot-tall outfit weighs about 85 pounds
and takes an estimated 10-12 minutes to put
on.• Thomas DePetrillo of Extreme Costumes tells INSIDER
how it came to life.

Cosplay designer Thomas DePetrillo told INSIDER the over
nine-foot-tall Reinhardt, one of the heroes in the
popular multiplayer first-person shooter from Blizzard, took
about five weeks to build with a team of three people. It
was completed on the first day of New York Comic Con.

DePetrillo's no stranger to cosplay. He's been building
larger-than-life outfits for the past 20 years through his
company Extreme Costumes.
In fact, he
sold his car wash so he could live out his passion of
creating these costumes with a small team in Rhode Island.

Fans were taken aback by
the Bumblebee cosplay at New York Comic Con in
2014.Kirsten Acuna/Business
Insider

This year's creation was inspired by the popular video game
"Overwatch," one DePetrillo has been following for the past
two years.

"I’ve always been drawn over to Reinhardt just because he looks
so incredibly badass," said DePetrillo of his interest in
creating this year's ensemble. "It’s an awesome game because not only does it
offer tons of great gameplay, but it’s an inclusive game. It
offers a variety of different body types and different genders,
different races, different ethnicities, different political
backgrounds are all being shown to be inclusive."

DePetrillo could be seen
roaming the Con with many others in "Overwatch" cosplay Friday
and Saturday of New York Comic Con.Mike Coppola/Getty Images

The man behind the suits:
Thomas DePetrillo speaks with us while showing off his Reinhardt
helmet.Kirsten
Acuna/INSIDER

DePetrillo estimates the Reinhardt costume weighs about 85 pounds
and takes about 10-12 minutes to put on and take off.

"If I’ve got handlers, it’s definitely under 10 minutes," said
DePetrillo. "Solo, it’s probably like 12 minutes. But I can do
this solo and that’s pretty big."

Kristen Griffin/Insider

DePetrillo makes his way
down 11th avenue Friday, October 7 to enter New York Comic
Con.Kirsten
Acuna/INSIDER

Last year's Hulkbuster outfit took about double the time to
get into. DePetrillo needed the help of a few people to get
situated inside the massive costume, which weighed about 95
pounds.

DePetrillo's creations are also meticulously detailed.
For instance, a rocket pack in the back of Reinhardt lights
up and pivots. The wrists on each hand rotate and the fingers are
all individually controllable.

In addition to the giant
cosplay, Reinhardt holds a giant hammer which weighs in at about
seven pounds.Kirsten
Acuna/INSIDER

One thing DePetrillo wasn't able to show off at New York
Comic Con was the so-called stomp feature.

"I have foot stompers which make
a crash sound every time he takes a step," DePetrillo said.
He also mentioned that he has an additional 45 feet of lighting
just waiting to be installed, but he didn't have the time. "Am I
going to New York Comic Con or am I installing the lighting? I
chose to come here."

Inside the costume, DePetrillo
becomes a virtual celebrity. It's difficult for him to even
walk around Comic Con without getting stopped for numerous photo
ops.

This is a typical scene of
people gathered around DePetrillo when he's showing off his
cosplay.Kirsten
Acuna/INSIDER

This is DePetrillo's second take at the Reinhardt cosplay. A
previous version of the costume, which was made in just three
weeks, was shown off earlier this year at San Diego Comic-Con.

"I wasn’t happy with him in San
Diego. He just didn’t have the size and feel that I felt was
appropriate to Reinhardt," DePetrillo admitted. "So then we came
back home and decided to make all new legs, all new thighs, a new
head ... new forearms.

Here, you can see the new
stilts being installed for New York Comic Con.Courtesy of Thomas DePetrillo, Extreme
Costumes

"That sounds like everything’s
all new, but the skeleton and the frame is really a lot of the
same frame," he added. "The skeleton of one of my costumes is
literally half of the work, if not more."

It was a lot of 16-hour days
for himself and apprentices Qi Ma and Ryan to complete
Reinhardt 2.0, as DePetrillo fondly refers to the revamped
outfit, for New York Comic Con.

DePetrillo has been attending various Cons and events for several
years now, but he wasn't always building giant costumes full
time. In 2009, DePetrillo
attended New York Anime fest in one of his three different
Bumblebee Transformers costumes. That was the moment
he realized how much attention his creations could
receive.

"There was like 10,000 people
that started cheering for me at once and I was like, 'Wow. I
think I’ve got something here,'" DePetrillo
recalled.

A couple of years later,
DePetrillo took one of his newer Bumblebee costumes — one which
turns into a car — by a Chevy booth at New York Comic Con.
DePetrillo says when they noticed their attendance increase
dramatically, Chevy reached out and he started taking money in
exchange for showing up at various Chevrolet events. DePetrillo
says Disney has also flown him to London for a photoshoot
in his Hulkbuster outfit.

A crowd surrounds
DePetrillo at New York Comic Con in 2014 near the Chevy
booth.Kirsten Acuna/Business
Insider

"At that point, it became more of
a part-time job," he explained. "Then I got additional contracts
for other costumes and more commission work. Then it got to the
point where it got to be about 40K a year and I thought,
Maybe I could take that leap and become just a full-time
costume person.”

As the work increased, DePetrillo
decided he needed more people to help him out. His first
apprentice, Quin Mae, has been with him for a few years now. He
currently has four full-time employees.

"We’ve now moved out of the home
shop into a 2,500-square-foot shop," he says. "We have a
number of different contracts either for large commissions or for
doing paid appearances and I’m happier than I’ve been at any
point in my life."